Scheduling of meetings has always been fraught with problems. This is particularly the case when one scheduling a meeting, or meeting scheduler, has no management or other control over those whose attendance is either desired or necessary.
The prior art initially eased the scheduling burden in that keyboard/display terminal users' schedules were stored in varying calendar forms, and all could be made available for call up at each terminal. These schedules could be called and scanned to determine common available times. This was extremely time consuming if schedules were only available in narrative form on a day-at-a-time basis. Even when monthly abbreviated schedules or calendars were available for call-up, mental or pencil and paper notation of available times was both error prone and no minor chore.
The prior art has now gone further in solving the above noted problems. Calendar application programs, stored in a host computer to which the terminal users are connected, are able to read calendars of prospective attendees and provide a listing of available meeting times and dates. The available times and dates are derived from date and time ranges provided by the scheduler. From this listing, a meeting scheduler can select a suitable time and date. After making a selection, and either writing down or making a mental note of the suitable time and date, the meeting scheduler can key and transmit a message to each attendee. Still required though, is excessive keying in terms of rekeying attendees names, and a meeting time and date.
The invention of this application presents advances over known art or work of others in that available meeting times and dates are presented to the meeting scheduler as an option screen. The option screen is keyed to in order to select a time and date for the meeting. Upon selecting from the option screen, a notification screen is presented to the scheduler. Keying to the notification screen is to fill in the purpose and location of the meeting, and if appropriate, to shorten the duration of the meeting. Upon completing the notification screen, the screen is transmitted to notify all attendees of the meeting. The advantages of these advances are time savings, error reduction, and reduced keying requirements. In addition, the user scheduling the meeting does not have to be concerned with exact beginning and ending times for the meeting during the initial steps of setting up the meeting.